1. Field of the Invention
The main object of the invention is a reconfigurable computing device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Computers are becoming increasingly complex today. The present trend in the making of computers is towards machines comprising several processors that simultaneously process the same instruction (single instruction multiple data stream or SIMD machines). A modern computer is capable of being partially out of order, i.e. a portion of the results given by the computer will be erroneous while another part of the computations is not affected by the failure. The device of the present invention is a computer capable of functioning even when a portion of its elements undergoes are malfunctioning. For example, if the failure occurs place in a processor, it will not be possible to use the said processor in the rest of the computations.
In the first case, where there is a number of processors greater than the number needed to perform the computations, the malfunctioning processor is de-activated. A processor which is not in use may resume the calculation which was to have been performed by the malfunctioning processor.
In the second case, the processors in working order share out the work of the malfunctioning processor which is put out of the circuit.
Thus, in both cases, the computer is reconfigured. Now, computers are increasingly being used for the real-time supervision of machines. A reconfiguration at a critical moment, given that some of the results delivered by the computer remain valid, may have far worse consequences than the continuation of computations by a partly defective computer. For the risk entailed by a reconfiguration is that the computer may lose the results of the computations in progress as well as the intermediate results.